Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T20:29:45.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WILLIAM CAMDEN, PHILEMON HOLLAND AND THE 1610 TRANSLATION OF BRITANNIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2015

Oliver D Harris
Oliver D Harris*
Affiliation:
Oliver D Harris, 27 The Cloisters, 145 Commercial Street, London E1 6EB, UK. Email: oliverdharris@netscape.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the background to the publication in 1610 of the first English-language edition of William Camden’s Britannia, translated from the Latin by Philemon Holland. The translation itself is shown to be free, but largely reliable. Camden is found to have played little part in the detailed work of translation, but to have contributed most of the volume’s new content. The translation’s place within the formation of an English and a British national identity is considered.

Résumé

Cet article analyse le contexte de la publication, en 1610 de la première édition en langue en anglaise de la Britannia de William Camden, traduite du latin par Philemon Holland. Il montre que la traduction elle-même, bien que libre, est dans l’ensemble fidèle. Il conclut que Camden n’a joué qu’un rôle limité dans le détail de la traduction, mais qu’il est l’auteur de la majeure partie des éléments nouveaux du volume. Il examine le rôle joué par la traduction dans la constitution d’une identité nationale anglaise et britannique.

Zusammenfassung

Diese Abhandlung erforscht die Hintergründe zur Veröffentlichung der ersten englischsprachigen Ausgabe von William Camdens Britannia im Jahre 1610 in der Übersetzung aus dem Lateinischen von Philemon Holland. Die Übersetzung selbst ist freier Art, aber weitgehend zuverlässig. Camden war erwiesenermaßen kaum an der eingehenden Übersetzungsarbeit beteiligt, trug jedoch den Großteil zum neuen Inhalt des Bandes bei. Es wird die Stellung der Übersetzung innerhalb der Bildung einer englischen und einer britischen nationalen Identität erwogen.

Type
Papers
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 95 , September 2015 , pp. 279 - 303
Copyright
© The Society of Antiquaries of London 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Manuscript sources

BCM, GL5/129, 130, 176–7Google Scholar
BL, Cotton Jul C.vGoogle Scholar
Bodl, Ashmole 849, William Camden, ‘Britannia’, trans Robert Knolles, c 1610Google Scholar
Bodl, Aubrey 5, John Aubrey, ‘An Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum’, c 1687–90Google Scholar
Bodl, Ballard 5Google Scholar
Bodl, Eng. b. 2043Google Scholar
Bodl, Rawl. D. 1170Google Scholar
Bodl, Rawl. letters 36Google Scholar
Bodl, Smith 19, pp 11–75, William Camden, ‘A Suplement of the Topographicall Description of Britain published MDCX’, c 1610–21Google Scholar
Bodl, Smith 47, 62, 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodl, Tanner 25Google Scholar
Bodl, Top. gen. c.25, John Aubrey, ‘Monumenta Britannica’, c 1663–93Google Scholar
CHC, BA/H/3/20/2, Coventry Corporation payments book, 1561–1653Google Scholar
CUL, Add 4467, Coventry School library benefactors’ book, c 1601–1705Google Scholar
TNA, PRO SP 14/1/3, Robert Cotton, ‘A Discourse of ye discent of the K’s Majesty from the Saxons’, 26 March 1603Google Scholar

Notes on citation

In addition to citing Camden 1607 generally, I have cited three specific copies of the book that contain unique features in the form of MS annotations, etc. These are all in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, under shelfmarks I 2.2 Med., C 8.1 Art and Smith 1, and I cite them in nn 74, 94, 96 and 111. They are not cited in the bibliography.Google Scholar
I have frequently cited Camden 1610. This edition, although a single volume, falls into two parts with separate pagination sequences: a main one running pp 1–822, followed by a shorter one (for the accounts of Scotland and Ireland), running pp 1–233. I have distinguished references to the second sequence with an asterisk, and the convention is explained in n. 68.Google Scholar

Published sources

Anon 1612. Index Librorum Prohibitorum et Expurgatorum, MadridGoogle Scholar
Arber, E (ed) 1875–94. A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554–1640 AD, 5 vols, privately printed, London and BirminghamGoogle Scholar
B M [pseud, ie Ellis, H] 1843. ‘P Holland’s translation of the Britannia’, Gentleman’s Mag, new ser, 20, 489–490Google Scholar
Beal, P 1980. Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol I: 1450–1625. Pt I: Andrewes–Donne, Mansell, LondonGoogle Scholar
Beilin, E V 2004– . ‘Elizabeth Chamberlain, Lady Chamberlain (1576–1635)’, in H C G Matthews and B Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: online edition, <http:www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4642> (21 Nov 2014)Google Scholar
[Bohun, E (trans)] 1686. The Roman History written in Latine by Titus Livius, Awnsham Churchill, LondonGoogle Scholar
Bolton, E 1610. Elements of Armories, LondonGoogle Scholar
Boon, G C 1987. ‘Camden and the Britannia’, Archaeol Cambrensis, 136, 1–19Google Scholar
Botley, P and Miert, D van (eds) 2012. The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger, 8 vols, Droz, GenevaGoogle Scholar
Brewer, J S (ed) 1839. The Court of King James the First; by Dr Godfrey Goodman, 2 vols, Richard Bentley, LondonGoogle Scholar
Broadway, J 1999. ‘John Smyth of Nibley: a Jacobean man-of-business and his service to the Berkeley family’, Midland Hist, 24, 79–97Google Scholar
Brooke, R [1599]. A Discoverie of Certaine Errours Published in Print in the Much Commended Britannia. 1594, LondonGoogle Scholar
Brooke, R 1723–4. A Discoverie of Certaine Errours Published in Print in the Much Commended Britannia, 1594, J Woodman & D Lyon, LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1586. Britannia, LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1590. Britannia, LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1600. Britannia, LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1607. Britannia, LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1610. Britain (trans P Holland), LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1637. Britain (trans P Holland), LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1722. Britannia (ed E Gibson), 2nd edn, 2 vols, A Churchill, LondonGoogle Scholar
Camden, W 1984. Remains Concerning Britain (ed R D Dunn), University of Toronto Press, TorontoGoogle Scholar
Collinson, P 1998. ‘One of us? William Camden and the making of history’, Trans Roy Hist Soc, 6th ser, 8, 139–163Google Scholar
Davies, J [1611]. The Scourge of Folly, LondonGoogle Scholar
Davies, G 1997. ‘Sir Robert Cotton’s collection of Roman stones: a catalogue with commentary’, in Wright 1997, 129–167Google Scholar
Doble, C Eet al (eds) 1885–1921. Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, 11 vols, Oxford Historical Society 2, 7, 13, 34, 42, 43, 48, 50, 65, 67, 72, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Duncan-Jones, K 1999. ‘Bess Carey’s Petrarch: newly discovered Elizabethan sonnets’, Rev Engl Studies, new ser, 50, 304–319Google Scholar
Dust, P 1975. ‘Philemon Holland’s translation of Suetonius’s lives of Julius and Augustus: a view of the translator as scholar and stylist’, Babel, 21, 109–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, H (ed) 1843. Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, Camden Soc 23, LondonGoogle Scholar
Erondelle, P 1605. The French Garden: for English ladyes and gentlewomen to walke in, LondonGoogle Scholar
F [pseud, ie Forster, T] (ed) 1845–50. Epistolarium, or fasciculi of curious letters ... of the Forster family, 2 vols, privately printed, BrugesGoogle Scholar
Fuller, T 1642. The Holy State, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Fuller, T 1662. The History of the Worthies of England, LondonGoogle Scholar
Gibson, E (ed) 1695. Camden’s Britannia, A Swalle and A & J Churchill, LondonGoogle Scholar
Goffart, W 1997. ‘The first venture into “medieval geography”: Lambarde’s map of the Saxon Heptarchy (1568)’, in J Roberts and J L Nelson (eds), Alfred the Wise: studies in honour of Janet Bately on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, 53–60, D S Brewer, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
G[ough], R 1780. British Topography, 2 vols, T Payne et al, LondonGoogle Scholar
Harmsen, T 1996. ‘High-principled antiquarian publishing: the correspondence of Thomas Hearne (1678–1735) and Thomas Smith (1638–1710)’, Lias, 23, 69–98Google Scholar
Harris, O 2004. ‘Stow and the contemporary antiquarian network’, in I Gadd and A Gillespie (eds), John Stow (1525–1605) and the Making of the English Past: studies in early modern culture and the history of the book, 27–35, British Library, LondonGoogle Scholar
Harris, O 2007. ‘John Leland and the “Briton brykes”’, Antiq J, 87, 346–356Google Scholar
Hay, D 1977. Annalists and Historians: Western historiography from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries, Methuen, LondonGoogle Scholar
Helgerson, R 1992. Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan writing of England, University of Chicago Press, ChicagoGoogle Scholar
Hepple, L W 1999. ‘Sir Robert Cotton, Camden’s Britannia, and the early history of Roman Wall studies’, Archaeol Aeliana, 5th ser, 27, 1–19Google Scholar
Herendeen, W 2007. William Camden: a life in context, Boydell, WoodbridgeGoogle Scholar
Hessels, J H (ed) 1887. Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum. Tom 1: Abrahami Ortelii ... Epistulae, Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Holland, P (trans) 1600. The Romane Historie written by T Livius of Padua, LondonGoogle Scholar
Holland, P (trans) 1601. The Historie of the World: commonly called, the Natural Historie of C Plinius Secundus, 2 vols, LondonGoogle Scholar
Holland, P (trans) 1606. The History of Twelve Caesars, Emperours of Rome: written in Latine by C Suetonius Tranquillus, LondonGoogle Scholar
James, C W 1929. Chief Justice Coke, his family and descendants at Holkham, Country Life, LondonGoogle Scholar
King, M L 1991. Women of the Renaissance, University of Chicago Press, ChicagoGoogle Scholar
Krogt, P van der 1997–2003. Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici, 3 vols in 4, HES & de Graaf, ’t Goy-HoutenGoogle Scholar
Kunst, C 1995. ‘William Camden’s Britannia: history and historiography’, in M H Crawford and C R Ligota (eds), Ancient History and the Antiquarian: essays in memory of Arnaldo Momigliano, 117–131, Warburg Institute Colloquia 2, LondonGoogle Scholar
Lambarde, W 1576. A Perambulation of Kent, LondonGoogle Scholar
Leland, J 2010. De uiris illustribus: On Famous Men (ed J P Carley), Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, TorontoGoogle Scholar
Levine, J M 1991. The Battle of the Books: history and literature in the Augustan Age, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NYGoogle Scholar
Levy, F J 1964. ‘The making of Camden’s Britannia’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance, 26, 70–97Google Scholar
Levy, F J 1967. Tudor Historical Thought, Huntington Library, San Marino, CalifGoogle Scholar
Lightfoot, J L (ed) 2014. Dionysius Peregrietes: Description of the Known World, Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar
McKitterick, D 1997. ‘From Camden to Cambridge: Sir Robert Cotton’s Roman inscriptions, and their subsequent treatment’, in Wright 1997, 105–128Google Scholar
Maclean, J (ed) 1883–5. ‘The lives of the Berkeleys ... by John Smyth, of Nibley’, in The Berkeley Manuscripts, 3 vols, Bristol Gloucestershire Archaeol Soc, GloucesterGoogle Scholar
Matthiessen, F O 1931. Translation: an Elizabethan art, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MassGoogle Scholar
May, S W (ed) 1988. Henry Stanford’s Anthology: an edition of Cambridge University Library Manuscript Dd. 5.75, Garland, New YorkGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, R J 2000. ‘Edmund Gibson’s editions of Britannia: dynastic chorography and the particularist politics of precedent, 1695–1722’, Hist Res, 73, 239–261Google Scholar
Mayhew, R J 2003. ‘William Camden and Britannia’, in W Camden, Britannia (ed R J Mayhew), 3 vols (i, xiii–xxiii), Thoemmes Press, BristolGoogle Scholar
Meel, J W (ed) 1700. Francisci et Joannis Hotomanorum ... Epistolae, AmsterdamGoogle Scholar
Nashe, T 1594. The Terrors of the Night, LondonGoogle Scholar
Nicolson, W 1696. The English Historical Library, A Swalle and T Child, LondonGoogle Scholar
Parry, G 1995. The Trophies of Time: English antiquarians of the seventeenth century, Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Piggott, S 1976. ‘William Camden and the Britannia’, in Ruins in a Landscape: essays in antiquarianism, 33–53, Edinburgh University Press, EdinburghGoogle Scholar
Powicke, M 1948. ‘William Camden’, English Stud [= English Ass Essays and Stud], new ser, 1, 67–84Google Scholar
Ramsay, N (ed) 2014. Heralds and Heraldry in Shakespeare’s England, Shaun Tyas, DoningtonGoogle Scholar
Rockett, W 1995. ‘The structural plan of Camden’s Britannia’, Sixteenth Century J, 26, 829–841Google Scholar
Schwyzer, P 2009. ‘John Leland and his heirs: the topography of England’, in M Pincombe and C Shrank (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature, 1485–1603, 238–253, D S Brewer, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Skelton, R A 1970. County Atlases of the British Isles, 1579–1850, Carta Press, LondonGoogle Scholar
Smith, T (ed) 1691. V Cl Gulielmi Camdeni, et Illustrium Virorum ad G Camdenum Epistolae, LondonGoogle Scholar
Sowerby, R 2010. ‘Ancient history’, in G Braden, R Cummings and S Gillespie (eds), The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol 2: 1550–1660, 301–311, Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Stenhouse, W 2005. Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: historical scholarship in the late Renaissance, Institute of Classical Studies, LondonGoogle Scholar
Strong, R 1969. Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, 2 vols, HMSO, LondonGoogle Scholar
Sutton, D F 2004. William Camden, Britannia (1607), with an English translation by Philemon Holland: a hypertext critical edition, <http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/cambrit/> (21 Nov 2014)+(21+Nov+2014)>Google Scholar
Swalle, Aet al [c 1692]. Proposals for Printing by Subscription, Cambden’s Britannia, English, LondonGoogle Scholar
Swalle, Aet al 1693. New Proposals for Printing by Subscription, Cambden’s Britannia, English, LondonGoogle Scholar
Toulmin Smith, L (ed) 1906–10. The Itinerary of John Leland, 5 vols, George Bell & Sons, LondonGoogle Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H 1985. ‘Queen Elizabeth’s first historian: William Camden’, in Renaissance Essays, 121–148, Secker & Warburg, LondonGoogle Scholar
Vine, A 2010. In Defiance of Time: antiquarian writing in early modern England, Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Vine, A 2014. ‘Copiousness, conjecture and collaboration in William Camden’s Britannia’, Renaissance Stud, 28, 225–241Google Scholar
Wagner, A 1967. Heralds of England: a history of the Office and College of Arms, HMSO, LondonGoogle Scholar
Walters, G and Emery, F 1977. ‘Edward Lhuyd, Edmund Gibson, and the printing of Camden’s Britannia, 1695’, The Library, 5th ser, 32, 109–137Google Scholar
Warnicke, R M 1988. ‘Women and humanism in England’, in A Rabil (ed), Renaissance Humanism: foundations, forms, and legacy, 3 vols (ii, 39–54), University of Pennsylvania Press, PhiladelphiaGoogle Scholar
[Wood, A à] 1691–2. Athenae Oxonienses, 2 vols, LondonGoogle Scholar
Wood, A à 1813–20. Athenae Oxonienses (ed P Bliss), 4 vols, F C and J Rivington etc, LondonGoogle Scholar
Woolf, D R 1990. The Idea of History in Early Stuart England: erudition, ideology, and ‘the light of truth’ from the accession of James I to the Civil War, University of Toronto Press, TorontoGoogle Scholar
Wormald, J 1996. ‘James VI, James I and the identity of Britain’, in B Bradshaw and J Morrill (eds), The British Problem, c 1534–1707: state formation in the Atlantic Archipelago, 148–171, Macmillan, BasingstokeGoogle Scholar
Wright, C J (ed) 1997. Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: essays on an early Stuart courtier and his legacy, British Library, LondonGoogle Scholar